Classical Chinese flashcards

manchucka

Member
Re: Guwen flashcards

Perhaps you mean wenyan 文言 flashcards. I don't mean to split hairs, but I doubt that any (or many) of us are working on paleography. I had many cards in a wenyan list that I unfortunately lost when I upgraded to 2.0. I am slowly building up this list again, but as of now, I only have 2 or 3 in it. I would certainly be willing to contribute these when my list gets bigger. Perhaps you would be able to start us off?
 
Re: Guwen flashcards

Classical Chinese flashcards are very difficult to make because one character can have so many meaning (and pronunciations) in the 古文 text. The definition will depend on the context. Sometimes the modern definition applies to the classical text also.

For example:

qí 1) 「其」= 「之」,相當於白話「那麼」 2) 大概 3) 那麼 / 這麼
qǐ 1) 「其」=「豈」; 難道
qí 1) 「其」=「祈」 ; 希望 hope for ; seek

I made a ton of these types of classical Chinese flashcards, but I don't think people would be able make heads or tails of the definitions I have written. Some of the definitions have some English, while others are completely in Chinese. Some flashcards questions are sentences, while others are 2 - 5 characters. Also, I have found that trying to memorize 7 definitions for a single character for Classical Chinese isn't very useful. The most useful thing it to keep reading Classical text -- lots of it, over and over and over, until the definitions becomes second nature is more useful than using a flashcard program. And this is coming from a person who uses flashcard program religiously everyday, going over 300 terms a day everyday!

I don't know if this is helpful, but it's just my humble opinion.
 
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